March 31, 2009 (XVIII:11) Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT (1976, 109 min)

Directed by Larissa Shepitko Script by Yuri Klepikov and Larissa Shepitko based on the novel by Vasili Bykov Music by Alfred Shnitke Cinematography by Vladimir Chukhnov and Pavel Lebeshev

Boris Plotnikov....Sotnikov ....Rybak Sergei Yakovlev….village elder Lyudmila Polyakova….Demchika Viktoriya Goldentul….Basya Anatoli Solonitsyn…Portnoy, the Nazi interrogator Mariya Vinogradova….village elder’s wife Nikolai Sektimenko….Stas

Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival LARISSA SHEPITKO (6 January 1938, Artyomovsk, , -2 June 1979, Kalinin province, Soviet Union, auto accident ) directed 8 films and wrote 4 screenplays. The films she which are Ya pomnyu/I Remember (2006), Quiet Flows the Don directed are: Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1976), Ty i ya/You and (2006), Pervyy posle Boga (2005), The Night Is Bright (2004), Me (1971), V trinadtsatom chasu nochi/13 PM (1969, TV), Vesegonskaya volchitsa (2004), Voyna/War (2002), American Boy Nachalo nevedomogo veka/Beginning of an Unknown Era (1967, (1992), General (1992), Urga/ (1991), segment "Rodina elektrichestva"), Krylya/Wings (1966), Avtostop/Hitch-hiking (1990), Bez solntsa/Without Sun (1987), Znoy/Heat (1963), Zhivaya voda/Living Water (1957), and Slepoy Moonzund (1987), Levsha/The Left-Hander (1986), Skakal kazak kukhar/The Blind Cook (1956). cherez dolinu (1986), Zina-Zinulya (1986), Magistral (1983), Belyy voron/The White Crow (1981), Rodnik/The Spring (1981), (2 April 1949, Nevyansk, Sverdlovsk Predvaritelnoye rassledovaniye/Preliminary Investigation (1978), province, Soviet Union) has 28 acting credits, some of which are Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), and Moya sudba (1970). Pushkin: Poslednyaya duel (2006), Lavina (2001), Sverchok za ochagom (2001), Progulka po eshafotu (1992), Igra v smert, ili ANATOLI SOLONITSYN (30 August 1934, Nizhny Tagil, Soviet postoronniy/A Game Called Death, or the Intruder (1991), Union—11 June 1982, ) has 35 acting credits, including Gambrinus (1990), Sobachye serdtse/Heart of a Dog (1988), Ostanovilsya poyezd/The Train Has Stopped (1982), Dvadtsat Kholodnoe leto pyatdesyat tretego/Cold Summer of 1953 (1987), shest dney iz zhizni Dostoevskogo/Twenty Six Days from the Life of Pervaya vstrecha - poslednyaya vstrecha/First Encounter – Last Dostoyevsky (1981), Agoniya/Rasputin (1981), Muzhiki!/Peasants Encounter (1987), Gobseck (1987), Vremya synovey/The Time of (1981), Stalker (1979), Telokhranitel/The Bodyguard (1979), Sons (1986), Lermontov (1986), Dve glavy iz semeynoy khroniki Povorot/The Turning Point (1978), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1983), Dikaya okhota korolya Stakha/Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1977), Doverie/Trust (1976), Legenda o Tile/The Legend of Till (1979), Yemelyan Pugachyov (1978), and Voskhozhdeniye/The Ullenspiegl (1976), Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975), Ascent (1977). Vozdukhoplavatel/The Balloonist (1975), Svoy sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoy sredi svoikh/Friends Among Strangers, Stranger Among VLADIMIR GOSTYUKHIN (10 March 1946, Sverdlovsk, Soviet Friends (1974), Solyaris (1972), Prints i nishchiy/The Prince and Union, now Yekateinburg, ) has 58 acting credits, some of Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—2 the Pauper (1972), Proverka na dorogakh/Checkpoint (1971), and tyrannies and resistance to real change in silence, but when Abakir Andrey Rublyov (1966). strikes a woman, Kemal swings his tractor around and drives it within inches of the older man’s face. Beaten, Abakir leaves the VLADIMIR CHUKHNOV (10 April 1946—2 June 1979) has 7 collective, watched by the silent and impassive peasants as he cinematography credits: Proshchanie/Farewell (1983), Stakan packs his possessions and viciously smashes the radio his vody/A Glass of Water (1979), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), comrades had given him. The struggle between old and new is V chetverg i bolshe nikogda/On Thursday and Never Again (1977), examined in different terms in the character of the peasant girl Vylet zaderzhivayetsya/Flight Is Postponed (1974), Dom dlya Kalipa (Y. Yusupzhanova), striving to free herself from the dead Serafima (1973), and Semeynoe schaste/Family Happiness (1970). hand of patriarchal customs and religious tradition. Shepitko always managed to surround herself with collaborators of PAVEL LEBESHEV (15 February 1940, Moscow—23 February exceptional talent. Here she had the services of cinematographer 2003, Moscow) has 45 cinematography credits, including Stara Yuri Sokol and the composer (and future director) Tolomush basn. Kiedy slonce bylo bogiem (2003), Azazel (2002), Nezhnyy Okeyev, whose soundtrack ingeniously mixes music, voices, and vozrast/Tender Age (2000), Chek (2000), Mama/Mummy (1999), natural sounds. The cast was headed by two Kirgizians, Sibirskiy tsiryulnik/ (1998), Kavkazskiy Nurmukhan Zhanturin as Abakir and Bolot Shamsiev, then a plennik/Prisoner of the Mountains (1996), Privet, duralei!/Hello, fellow student of Shepitko’s at VGIK, later a director himself, as Fools! (1996), Grekh. Istoriya strasti/Sin: A Story of Passion Kemal. (1993), Nastya (1993), Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1990), In his article about the director in Films and Filming (March Mordashka/Pretty Face (1990), Rebro Adama/Adam’s Rib (1990), 1974), Derek Elley wrote: “Shepitko’s concern...has consistently Sukiny deti/Son of Bitches (1990), Zapretnaya zona/Forbidden been the clash of old and new....This sense of people acting out Zone (1988), Bez svideteley/Without Witness (1983), Neskolko their fortunes under the gaze of a greater and predetermining force dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova (1980), Pyat vecherov/ is given its clearest expression in her first feature. The setting of (1979), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), Raba lyubvi/A Slave of man against the open sky achieves a double effect: not only is the Love (1976), V trinadtsatom chasu nochi/13 PM (1969), and struggle between Kemal and Abakir made to seem particularly Nachalo nevedomogo veka/Beginning of an Unknown Era (1967). naked, but also its shows that man’s struggle is not only with himself....Shepitko breathes her own particular spirit into the from World Film Directors V II. Ed. John Wakeman. situation, managing to depict the departure of the old in the face of H.H.Wilson Co. NY 1988 the new...with a striking lack of propagandising...[and] Shepitko, Larissa (1939-July 2, 1979), Soviet considerable sympathy is shown for the director, was born in the small city of established order, the old ethics of the beys, Artemovsk in the Eastern Ukraine. At the age of despite the fact that the system is finally shown to sixteen she went to Moscow to take the be unworkable ....Visually, the film is admission examinations for VGIK, the state magnificent: the play of sun and cloud on corn; film school. There she became a pupil of the the value set on water in this arid part of Central great Ukrainian director . Asia....There is a toughness, however, in the After his death in 1956 Shepitko worked with lyricism which prevents the film from foundering his widow, Yulia Solntseva, on Poema o more in its 84 minutes.” (Poem of the Sea, 1958), the first part of a Clare Kitson agreed that “the images have an trilogy about Ukrainian village life that had extraordinary intensity, the heat seeming to drive been planned and scripted by Dovzhenko. human relationships to their breaking point.” After that Shepitko made two student Shepitko’s extraordinary skill in relating shorts, The Blind Cook (1961), a satire, and landscape to character—both as shaping influence Living Water (1962). The latter is said to have and challenge—reminded Elley not only of her been in the nature of a tribute to Dovzhenko, reflecting his lyrical mentor, Dovzhenko, but also of the early work of Leni Riefenstahl. style. Shepitko’s diploma film and first feature followed: Znoi This first feature won a special jury prize at Karlovy Vary and was (Heat, 1963), made when she was only twenty-two. The picture very warmly received in the Soviet Union itself. After completing was produced at Frunze, a small but enterprising studio in the the films, Shepitko left the Frunze Studio for the capital, spending Kirgiz Republic in Soviet Central Asia, near the Chinese border. the rest of her career at the Studio. Conditions on location were very difficult. The temperature at With her second feature, Krylya (Wings, 1966), Shepitko times reached such levels (up to 120º F) that the film stock melted. turned to a contemporary urban theme. Moving back and forth On the treeless Kirgizian steppes there was no shade except where between past and present, the story deals with four days in the life shelters could be constructed, and Shepitko herself fell ill. She of Nadezdha Petrovna (convincingly played by the little-known went on working, nevertheless, even when she had to be carried on Maya Bulgatova). She is a respected member of her city’s Soviet location on a stretcher, and head of a college of civil engineering. In Word War II, Heat was adapted from “The Camel’s Eye,” a story by Kirgiz however, she had been a much-decorated fighter pilot and a writer Chingiz Aitmatov, set in the mid-1950s. Kemal, a national heroine. Secretly she is consumed with nostalgia for those seventeen-year-old member of the Party youth organization, great days and envy of those who can still enjoy the freedom of the arrives as an idealistic volunteer on a collective farm in the skies. Moreover, if her peers admire her, her students find her sweltering steppeland. Soon he finds himself in conflict with narrow-minded, heartless, and authoritarian, And so does her only Abakir, who jealously protects his authority and his reputation as daughter Tanya (Zhanna Bolotova), whose immersion in a love the region’s best tractor driver. Kemal suffers Abakir’s petty affair is something Nadezhda can hardly comprehend. In the end Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—3

Nadezdha comes to recognize that her stern values are crisis”—a failure of faith in his work, in his unsatisfactory inappropriate in the postwar world, but it is not entirely clear marriage, and in himself. whether she is capable of change. Pyotr returns to the USSR but only to drop out of his career “The particular theme has intrigued me for a long time,” and his marriage, boarding a freight train to Siberia. Working Shepitko explained. “I want to tell about the generation of victors, there, he meets and helps a girl () who has also the men and women who bore the burden of the war, and show tried to opt out, in her case by attempting suicide. Their through one person the difficult path traveled by those who fought unhappiness brings them together and a relationship develops. It in the war, the moral and ethical mistakes they made, and how they cannot last; they are products of different societies and different corrected them.” For Nadezhda is an example: “The war has put its generations. This is confirmed in a powerful scene when stamp on her thinking. Everything in wartime is brutal, definite and “recovered, confident in herself, indifferent, she suddenly takes clear—an enemy is an enemy, a coward is a coward. She had close to her heart his failure and misfortune, and in his outburst of carried these theoretical judgments over into civilian life and failed open emotion, unintelligible to her, she bows and kisses his hand to realize that her swift decisions had turned into superficial in the presence of an unsought group on onlookers—only acute decisions. Her mental growth had stopped. A proud person, skill could make this mechanical, conventional action seem Nadezdha tries furiously to justify and defend herself, and natural” (V. Demin). Coming to terms with reality, Pyotr, a little succeeds, as a result, in losing the regard of her family and friends; more mature than when he arrived in Siberia, decides to return to she finds herself alone. The viewer will hear no repentant speeches his proper metier: to Moscow and to Katya. from her lips, but at the end he realizes that the crisis has passed You and I was scripted by Gennadi Shpalikov and and Nadezhda’s attitude has changed.” The “thaw” that had photographed in color by Alexander Knyaginski (partly on location followed Stalin’s death, bringing greater freedom of expression in at Norilsk, a part of Siberia associated with Stalin’s prison camps). the Soviet arts, was interrupted after Krushchev’s enforced Both were 1963 graduates, with Shepitko, of VGIK, as was the art retirement in 1964, and some of the old controls were reimposed. director, Alexander Boym. “The film is really about us,” Shepitko Iskusstvo Kino (October 1966) was brave enough to devote twenty said. “That is why it is called You and I....At the copiously illustrated pages to Wings. A range of critical opinion age of thirty one gains a certain clarity about many things which was represented in the article, along with a guarded editorial have happened or are happening to you. Thirty is a peak of commendation saying that the serious viewer would find in the life....Three years ago I couldn’t have made such a picture. And film “much of importance and (in the right sense of the word) probably a couple of years from now I will look at this period edification.” Elsewhere there were self-righteous complaints that differently.” And, speaking of this, her first use of color, she Shepitko had done her country a disservice by suggesting that explained “this is a film of sensations, feelings, emotions. The conflict might exist between the generations in the Soviet Union, subject of our investigation is the inner world of our characters— and by “jeering” at war heroes. Nevertheless, according to A.S. impulsive, concentrated, varied. Color...becomes a vital Barkiest’ Soviet Cinema, the film, controversial as it was, component. The material and color sphere of the film were established Shepitko as “one of the important film makers of the absolutely new to me—I entered it with trepidation and curiosity.” Soviet new wave.” The film was, not surprisingly, frowned on by the Soviet Her next project was Radina electrichestva (The Homeland of critics. Derek Elley quoted V. Demin as saying that “the work, in Electricity), a medium-length feature based on a story by Andrei my opinion, does not come off; the story of a young doctor, Plstonov. According to Ronald Holloway in Variety (July 25, seduced by an easy life and now wandering through society in 1979), it portrayed “poverty in the 1920s during the civil war search of a confused calling, is told hazily, with strange period” and “had as its central motif the search for water and the omissions.” employment of religious icons and processions to wring water For Elley himself, “Shepitko has told her story in a succession from an arid landscape....[It] linked her with Dovzhenko and of dazzling images, edited together in to a finely honed time recalled an earlier student short, Living Water.” For some reason structure which does not begin to yield up its secrets until Pyotr the project was shelved by the authorities in 1968, and Shepitko boards the freight-train out of Moscow.... The film is as much did not complete another film until 1971. about Katya and the couple’s colleague and friend Sasha (Yuri This was Ty I ya (You and I). In this film, far from retreating Vizbor) as about Pyotr. By fleeing to Siberia, he has selfishly left to the relative safety of literary adaptations and costume movies, his wife in a pool of indecision over whether to remain faithful in like many of her colleagues at the time, Shepitko addressed herself his absence. For some time their marriage has been breaking down; even more directly than in Wings to the ailments of contemporary there is also clearly an attraction between Sasha and Katya. In a Soviet society and in particular to the alienation of a privileged final central scene, set in a café, the two talk about themselves and intelligentsia. She also invited further disapproval by adopting an Pyotr....This is the other side of Pyotyr’s action, an elliptical and nonchronological time structure that reminded some acknowledgement by Shepitko that no one is free to pursue an critics of Antonioni and Resnais. absolutely separate line of action; though caught in an apparent The film opens, indeed, with a series of apparently vacuum in everyday work (a long tracking shot along a corridor, disconnected scenes: painful shots of the dogs being used in exclusively composed of meaningless greetings, succinctly laboratory experiments (over which the credits are read aloud); a encapsulates his feelings) he also owes something to those in his woman strolling on a Moscow street; a man running through circle....From her three features so far, Larissa Shepitko leaves no Stockholm.Gradually it emerges that the man is Pyotr (Leonid doubt that there is a major talent at work in Soviet cinema today.” Dyachkov), a brain surgeon (hence the laboratory animals); the The film won a prize at Venice, but some critics there were almost woman is his wife Jatya (a memorable performance from Alla as confused by its jigsaw puzzle time structure as their Soviet Demidova). On a posting to Sweden, Pyotr undergoes a “life colleagues. Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—4

There was another long silence before Voskhozdenie (The Set in the blistering winds and snow of occupied Byelorussia Ascent, 1977 [sic]), adapted by Shepitko and Yuri Kleptikov from of 1942, two Russians, Sotnikov and Rybak, are cut off from their a story by Vasil Bykov. The Russian title has religious overtones, platoon and seek refuge from the cold Soviet landscape in a invoking the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The film is set woman’s cottage. Soon after finding shelter, all three are captured in the bitter winter of 1942 in German-occupied Belorussia. A by the Nazis and tortured, an ordeal only two survive. Russian officer (Boris Plotnikov) is captured by the Germans and There is virtually no dialogue in the beginning of the film, the interrogated and tortured by a fellow Russian, a collaborator. only sound is that of gusting winds as Sotnikov and Rybak struggle Suffering thus, he comes gradually to the conclusion that his own through knee-deep snow in a blinding storm, which is enough to life is worthless, but can acquire meaning if it is sacrificed: “To die convey the men’s fear on its own. for others is to survive.” Real conversation comes after the capture, when Sotnikov and Like You and I, The Ascent has an excellent score by the Rybak come into conflict as one ascends to heroic status while his avant-garde composer Alfred Shnitke. For this film Shepitko fellow becomes an agent of the German-controlled local police. returned to black and white, perhaps because this can best express The Ascent is a compelling account of the Russian peoples’ and symbolize the conflict between good and evil. Clare Kitson encounter with the Nazis during World War II. It powerfully thought it “ravishingly shot” and “uncompromising in its view of conveys the environment of paranoia, fear, self-doubt, and self- wartime collaboration and an unusual Soviet work in its emphasis conflict which prevailed during the conflict as well as the traumatic on spiritual qualities rather than conventional heroics.” impact the war would have on future generations, which came out The Ascent won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in toward the end of the film in an extremely moving execution 1977 and a number of lesser prizes elsewhere. At Telluride the film scene. was hailed as “a breakthrough in socialist cinema.” In 1978 But the struggle for survival in a hostile physical environment Shepitko returned to Berlin as a jury member, and was further also brings out two positives strengthened by conflict: friendship honored by a retrospective of her four features. She even received and patriotism. an invitation (from the actress Ellen Burstyn) to direct a film in the Larissa Shepitko, who directed the film in 1976, was one of United States, but declined for the time on account of her the few major female directors in Soviet filmmaking. Born in Kiev inadequate grasp of English. in 1939, Shepitko went to study direction at the State Institute for Shepitko’s most acclaimed film was also her last. On July 2, Cinematography in Moscow in 1958. Shepitko was married to 1979, returning from a location search, she and four members of another prominent figure of Soviet cinema, Elim Klimov, and died her crew died in an automobile accident on a road near Moscow. shortly before the completion of his film “Farewell,” which she The film she was working on, adapted from a story by the Siberian was originally supposed to direct. writer , was a sad irony called Farewell. It was completed by Shepitko’s husband, the director . He Susan Sontag, in the New Yorker: also assembled a moving “love-letter” to his wife in the short No photograph, or portfolio of photographs, can unfold, go further, photomontage Larissa (1981). and further still, as does The Ascent (1977), by the Ukranian Clare Kitson has testified to the personal magnetism that made director , the most affecting film about the horror Shepitko “so many friends when she visited the London Film of war I know. Festival with The Ascent in 1977,” adding: “One probably shouldn’t mention her extraordinary beauty at all.” Jeanne from The New Yorker Weekend Shorts. Sean Nelson Vronskaya said that Shepitko was “fascinated by painting and On film , dear old Mother Russia is all snow crushed by army music, and her films bear witness to this.” She and Klimov had one boots, human spirits crushed by ludicrous governmental stricture, son. and viewers’ attentions crushed by ponderous pacing. Larisa Shepitko’s Ascent, a story of Russian fugitives behind German from “Film Captures Effects of War: by Dena Capano lines in , is an exception to the rule that just because a The black-and-white film “The Ascent” portrays the Russo- movie was made in the Soviet ’70s, it has to be a crushing bore. German conflict through the story of a captured partisan who Dramatically bold and radically self-critical. escaped the Nazis only to fall into the hands of a Russian interrogator.

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THREE MORE TO GO IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XVIII: April 7 Warren Beatty REDS 1981 April 14 32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD April 21 Pedro Almodóvar /TODO SOBRE MI MADRE 1999

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Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—5

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